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My first way in to trying to understand what joy is has been to take examples of joyful objects and experiences and try to observe commonalities and patterns. In discussions with friends and family, one theme has emerged again and again: the contradiction of our expectations in a happy or pleasurable way.

Essentially, what I’ve just said in too many words is “good surprise.” A rainbow is a good surprise, as is a snowfall, or a visit from the ice cream man (maybe), and all these things are joyful. (Again, there are exceptions - a snowfall isn’t joyful if you have to get to work in treacherous conditions - but for many people, the sensory experience is an enormously positive trigger.)

Joy is so much more than just surprise, though. Things can be joyful without sneaking up on us. Another way our expectations can be subverted is by the sheer implausibility of them, the mystery of how they work. In this category are things that seem to controvert our expectations of how the world works, based on cultural mores, beliefs inculcated through life experience, and our obeisance to the laws of physics. Balloons and bubbles to me are joyful in this way. We know through our education how these things work, but we still feel a visceral wonder at their ability to exist. Rainbows and snow are also in this category, as are the Wii and the multitouch mechanism of the iPhone. These are expectations disrupted by magic, and interestingly we do not need to be surprised by them to be delighted by them. The Wii is still delightful on the 257th use, just as you can still be delighted by bubbles even if you are blowing them yourself and know when and where they will appear.

I also think there are expectations that are so subtle they can be disrupted in correspondingly subtle ways. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade strikes me as an unbelievably joyful spectacle (though I’ve had pushback on this from balloon- and crowd-haters - as with anything, there is always dissent). The sight of those giant balloons transforms the city into a toy city, and all the people on the streets into toy people. The insertion of a new element (cartoon balloons) creates a massive scale shift, causing us to see the city in a new way and disrupting our expectations of how it should look. These are expectations so basic we don’t even think about them, and when they are disrupted, we don’t even realize that they have been.

Not every joyful experience fits in here, though. I think there are also joyful sensory triggers - aromas, shapes, curves, and colors - that work in a different way on our psyche, and I’m still trying to reconcile these with this set of ideas around expectations.